How To Identify Good Business Process Outsourcing Services
Business process outsourcing services or BPO services have now become common. With more and more companies setting up units outside their own country in an attempt to cut down on overheads, increasing employee salaries and growing infrastructure costs, BPOs provide a viable business option for them.
Some of the most common examples of business process outsourcing are call centers, accounting, payroll outsourcing, and human resources. While outsourcing to india has been a favorite business mantra for many International organizations, majority of companies that have made their presence felt in India are IT companies such as IBM, British Telecom, Yahoo DSL; Insurance companies like Aviva, Max, etc; Finance companies like Intuit (Quick Books) and many more.
The use of business process outsourcing services is different from application servie provider (ASP). This also means that some amount of the risk in running the processes on behalf of the outsourcing company are transferred to the outsourced company. Some of the many elements included in BPO include the software for running the process, process management, human resources for operating the business as opposed to just the supply of access to various functionalities and characteristics provided through a software application in a typical ASP business model.
Part of the outsourcing industry, BPO is completely dependent on IT services and is therefore also referred to as ITES or Information Technology Enabled Services. LPO or Legal Process Outsourcing, KPO or Knowledge Process Outsourcing, Data Management Services etc are some of the categories that fit under Business process outsourcing services. Types of BPO Services After having understood the basics of BPO services, let's better understand the types of services offered by BPO companies. Broadly speaking, there are just two types of categories - horizontal and vertical services. Horizontal BPO Services: Horizontal BPO services deal with functional outsourcing. This means that the chosen vendor is specialized to carry out specific functions across a range of industries. Some examples of horizontal BPO services are payroll processing, Human Resources, procurement, facilities management and document processes. A company that offers horizontal BPO services is Automatic Data Processing (ADP). Not only does ADP provide services such as HR, payroll, tax solutions, and more but they may now also be focusing on providing vertical services as the BPO market is maturing.
Vertical BPO Services: Vertical BPO services deal in a range of functional services but over a limited number of industries. Unlike horizontal BPO, this type of BPO services only specific domains and focuses on providing all related services to those domains. Some examples of vertical BPO services include healthcare services, manufacturing, retails, financial services, insurance, technology etc. A good example of a vertical BPO services company is EXL Service Holdings. This company focuses on a range of services for a select few industries such as healthcare, business services, utilities and energy and manufacturing. Intellectual property research and documentation, legal services, medical transcription, R&D, Publishing etc are some of the other sub types of BPOs.
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